Highest PC Volume in 9 Years, Says Canalys; PCs Returned 'to Form,' Says IDC
Canalys and IDC published similar takes Wednesday on global PC industry performance for 2021. Canalys pegged 2021 unit shipments at 341 million, 15% higher than in 2020 and the highest volume since 2012. IDC, logging 14.8% market growth for the…
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year to 349 million units, referenced a "return to form" for the category in 2021. Q4 shipments of desktops, notebooks and workstations advanced by a point to 92 million units said Canalys, and revenue rose 11% in the quarter to $70 billion. It cited a "seismic transformation” in the industry, with a 13% two-year compound annual growth rate from 2019 underscoring the “importance of PCs” since the onset of the pandemic. Mobile PCs grew 16% in 2021 to 275 million units; desktops advanced 7% to 66 million, despite supply constraints. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a larger than normal proportion of PCs shipped have been new additions rather than replacement devices, led by education and remote work, said Canalys analyst Ishan Dutt. “While 2021 was the year of digital transformation, 2022 will be the year of digital acceleration,” said analyst Rushabh Doshi. “Demand for technology has boomed in the past two years, the effects of which continue to disrupt the supply chain, affecting not just availability of PCs, but also smartphones, automobiles and servers,” he noted. Though having a 6.5% year-on-year unit decline, Lenovo led the market in Q4 with total PC shipments of 21.7 million, while second-place HP sales slipped 3% year on year to 18.7 million. Dell unit sales rose 8.9% in the quarter to 59.3 million, followed by Apple at 7.8 million, up 9%, and Acer, which had a 6.7% increase to 6.6 million shipments. IDC, meanwhile, reported similar results for the top five, except for Acer (minus 7.7%), which it put in a statistical tie with Asus (plus 12.5% to 6.1 million) for fifth worldwide. IDC analyst Tom Mainelli said the PC market could have been larger if challenging logistics and ongoing supply-side shortages hadn't been factors. "We closed the year with many buyers still waiting for their PC orders to ship," Mainelli said, forecasting supply will remain constrained through the first half, especially in the commercial segment.